The First Crusade
The First Crusade was a semi-legendary campaign waged by the unified fleets of the Painted Legions under the leadership of dual hegemons Lanteia and Amphitryon. Despite a few setbacks and an eventual degradation of crusade-territory integrity, the First Crusade was a stunning victory in its primary goal of retrieving as many relics of Amun-Kiir and the Progenitors as possible. The rumbles of a new war. In the absence of strong powers, five centuries after the Flame and the disappearance of Terra, a now-defunct empire called the Malani Hegemony began a campaign in earnest to capture new territories for the empire. The Malani themselves had migrated from the Dark Stars in large fleets centered around immense seed-ships, and did not typically descend to planetary surfaces that Terran life would consider habitable. Instead, they lorded over their new territories and thralls in a more practical way, demanding resources and industry to fuel their fleets. Sometimes, battle thralls were directly taken to augment their expansion into new territories. Little is known of what drove the aliens to this state, but within three decades of their arrival, they began expanding rapidly veil-wards. After contact was made with the Legions- and early skirmishes proved hostile intent- the eight legions met to discuss what should be done. Earlier on, the proposal had been made that, with the isolation of Terra from its descendants dragging on, an effort should be made to reclaim as many artifacts as could be done and return them to areas of safekeeping in the Sundered Belt, now a fortified hell-scape of shattered planets and war-scarred moonlets. Now the danger of alien powers finding such artifacts and using them for their own ends became very real. The nominal leaders of the White and Black legions, Lanteia and Amphitryon, led the proposal that a campaign should be organized to push the aliens back, but this began an argument. The Legions had no unified command structure, relying on inter-legion negotiation and agreement. Such an undertaking would require command, and the intensely competitive Evocati would literally fight for such an honor. In centuries past, it had been tradition however for a pan-legion commander, titled Hegemon, to travel to the desolate surface of a hidden alien homeworld as part of a gate hopping sequence. Six worlds were required to be traveled through, the final involving a foot-crossing of half the planet to reach the required objective and gate back home. Such an undertaking was heroic in many ways, for the hardships endured had killed even many Evocati before. The final leg of the journey could not be made with any technology- armor and weapons had to be stripped, and the ichor of an Evocatus would be reduced in functionality to simple blood, as would all cybernetic organ replacements be reduced to strip their mechanical advantage. Anyone capable of surviving the journey was sharp minded and possessed a honed body, the two qualities Evocati prized in leadership. With no resolution to the argument in sight, even when commanders threatened to unsheath their blades against one another, Lanteia and Amphitryon announced that they would undertake the attempt to achieve hegemonic title. Debate soon squashed, and after some deliberation, they hammered out a plan. The Legions would hold their ground as best they could, preserving strength and preparing for the coming war with all means available. In two years, if the pair did not return, they should make limited advances to stop the aliens. In five, if they did not return, it was asked that the legions would put aside their arguments and form a joint council to coordinate the war. With this in mind, the two Legates moved to the first leg of the journey. The battle is joined: Second Breitenfeld. The pair returned slightly more than two years later, and just in time, for the Malani had forced the issue and struck into the Sundered Belt. Based on their apparent attack moves and intelligence gleaned from enemy captives, the Malani were moving toward the last intact Terran gate in known space, the Breitenfeld Gate. The Legions, especially Black, wanted desperately to defend their prized relic, and it was fortuitous that their Hegemons arrived in time to coordinate it. The battle involved twenty-thousand heavy vessels from the fleets of all eight Legions, not including drone hulls, corvettes and other such supplementary forces. Shocked by this display of unity, the Malani still moved into the attack with a two to one advantage. This numerical advantage soon proved to be an ill match for the high firepower and masterful leadership behind the Evocati fleets, and after a three day fight, the Malani had lost two thirds their hulls destroyed or crippled and were forced to retreat. Evocati losses were fairly minimal, a few hundred hulls in turn, and this victory spurred a burning desire to spread the power of the divined across known space. Over the next twenty years, thousands of star systems across known space would feel the combined might of the Legions. The First Crusade was a shining example of military brilliance. Under the coordination of two brilliant commanders, the Evocati functioned as a viciously effective fighting machine during countless battles, sieges and attacks; moreover, though the original thought had been to capture relics and keep them out of unreliable hands, the defeat of the Malani and continued defeats after the successful defense of Breitenfeld encouraged the Evocati to begin informally annexing territories outside of the Sundered Belt, and it would be many centuries before these achievements truly began to erode. More striking was the defeat of Malani power. The aliens were unused to resistance on such a wide scale, and their methods of war prevented functioning resistance against the posthumans who, contrary to many polities, have no set rules in the conduct of battle and are famously known for their pragmatically sterile calculations of cost to benefit. When the aliens attempted to use noncombatants, the Evocati reasoned that their slaves had made the decision to fight by not resisting and utilized thorough bombardments. When the aliens attempted to disengage from battles they believed unwinnable, a perfectly proper practice within their own culture, the Evocati sensed weakness and attacked to the point of firing up until warp jumps were detected. This and the increasingly distant treatment of ground-based thralls proved more than enough to fracture the Malani empire. The aliens were reduced through battle to a fraction of their original population. Ships confiscated, the Evocati effectively forced them into station-borne populations and vassaldom, unwilling to completely exterminate the aliens but similarly unwilling to let them go. For their part in the crusade, Amphitryon and Lanteia were shrewd in how they administered new territories. Images of protection and goodwill had to be fostered or the Evocati would be similarly hated. It was here that the White Legion showed its brilliance by directly administering its worlds, with the Black and several other legions preferring a hands-off approach of guardianship and recruitment. In this way, the Evocati territories remained politically sound and astrographically solid for centuries before the third and fourth crusades ended in utter disaster.